The best ways I’ve learned to recognize that my traumas are actually being processed is that my traumas start a) UNlinking from each other, b) UNlinking from triggers/stressors, & c) become very linear.
The unlinking looks very different when it’s triggers/stressors or trauma.
…I’m gonna do this a bit backwards for a moment….
TRIGGERS/STRESSORS
- sort of EITHER chip away, smooth out, lessen, polish themselves right out of existence; OR just *poof* vanish altogether, and I don’t realize that’s the case until something I absolutely know should drop kick me into the stratosphere? Simply doesn’t. Which leaves me blinking and going… oh. That’s weird. (And then I usually attempt to trigger myself, because I’m an idiot, and sometimes they flare back into life, and other times crickets. The ones that flare back, though? It’s like writing in the sand. The connection is completely insubstantial and melts away.).
- The ones that are attached to unprocessed trauma WILL come back, especially if I’m surprised or under stress. The ones that were attached to processed trauma, however, do NOT come back even if I’m retraumatized in the exact same way. Like a new rape, or car accident. Those new traumas will have their own triggers and stressors, but the don’t attach to anything processed in my history. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. The ones still attached to unprocessed trauma, however, it’s like kicking over Pandora’s box, as everything from the past floods out; or waking up in the morning with all new spiderwebs covered in dew that I never even saw being spun the night before. Either an explosion or a trickle over time, but either way? Seeeeeriously f*cked.
TRAUMA
- Trauma connections, I’ve found however, are far more complex. Instead of being attached to other traumas in a single way? There are dozens of connections, linking them all together. Like a 3 dimensional snowflake made out of spiderweb. It’s not enough to “simply” disconnect them in one place, but in myriad places. So it ends up being something a lot more like a spiral… I’m going to be processing trauma over and over and over again. In big ways, in tiny ways, in directed ways, in unscripted moments of “oh, that makes sense!” as my heart and mind are just totally blown away, in whispers as things “settle”, or things I durn well know intellectually shift t from head to heart, and I “know” “know”. For real.
3 (of many) examples of type?
- (THEMES) During my divorce it took me a few zillion flashbacks to realize what was connecting all of the traumas I was being flooded with… we’re “transitions”. It’s NOT that transitions are traumatizing. It’s that transition was (one of the many) threads linking these traumas together.
<<< Themes am incrediably useful thing to know when processing trauma, as instead of attempting to target the traumas themselves? Target the THEME. Start snipping those threads. So that any attempt to process any of those linked traumas doesn’t pile everything else on. <cough> Everything else will still pile on, as they’ll still be linked in other ways, until I’ve snipped enough threads linking them that there simply aren’t anymore links. <<< It’s one of those exponential processes, as in the beginning everything is so incrediably linked to everything else, but those bonds start weakening as I break more and more connections in different ways. So what might first link to dozens/hundreds/thousands of things in the beginning? Are 5% less. 25% less. 42% less. Whole great bigs swaths of trauma falling away, until there are so few links to other traumas that I can easily conceptualise exactly what is grouping these 4 or 5 traumas together, and predict what handful of traumas will be linked to those traumas. Which allows for amaaaaazing control towards the end. It’s like the difference between all the meals I can cook with all the items in a grocery store (thousands), versus the dozen or things I can cook with the 4-5 ingredients on my counter.
- (ASPECT). A theme is a myriad and complex thing, An aspect? Much less so. Like the time of day, or facial expression, a crowd, or an emotion. A pretty straightforward “thing” that I can cheat with to find, by looking at what my triggers & stressors are.
- (TRAUMA TYPE). Pretty straightforward… Ish. Since a lot of events have more than one type of trauma during them. One of the awesome things about types is that linked types (like rape, rape & assault, assault) Once ANY of the types is processed? It makes any trauma that shares that type infinitely easier to deal with. Like little islands of calm in the middle of a storm.
